Green Party hopefuls hit the campaign trail

PORTLAND – While presidential and vice presidential candidates spend the final weeks before Election Day pressing the flesh at campaign events, the Green Party vice presidential candidate is doing it in homeless shelters.

Pat LaMarche, who is running on the Green ticket with David Cobb, has begun a “Left Out Tour” to draw attention to those who in the daily struggle often are cut from the electorate. The plan: stump and sleep with the homeless. “Certainly my situation is one where I cannot win the election,” LaMarche said Wednesday while en route to Boston for the second night of her 14-night tour. “Getting votes is nowhere near as important as growing the Green Party.”

Meanwhile, Cobb has scheduled appearances in Maine in the coming days. He will speak at a fund-raiser in Unity at 8 p.m. today at the Center for the Performing Arts at 42 Depot St. The event, called “Rock the Right,” also will feature area ska, classic rock and hard rock bands.

Cobb will make an appearance around 2 p.m. today at Common Ground Country Fair, meeting with members of the Green Party at their booth in the Social and Political Tent No. 1, and mingling with fair-goers.

He also will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. on the steps of Portland City Hall, with other Maine Green Party candidates.

LaMarche, a former radio personality and the party’s candidate for governor in 1998, said the tour is not a publicity stunt. The point is to draw attention to homelessness, working poor and U.S. citizens without health insurance, she said.

Cobb is running on a platform that includes pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and reducing corporate influence in politics.

He has called the invasion of Iraq an “illegal, immoral and unjust war” and promised to apologize to the people of that country if he were elected president. He also wants to rescind every contract with Halliburton Corp. and Bechtel Corp. and use the money to “make reparations to the people of Iraq.”

LaMarche planned to spend Wednesday night at a homeless shelter in Boston. Other stops include: Providence, R.I.; New York; Washington, D.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Fayetteville, Ark.; Denver; Napa Valley, Calif.; Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; Detroit and Cleveland.